


The Incredible Robinsons

by CMRRosa, RockSunner



Category: Meet the Robinsons, The Incredibles (2004)
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Shared Universe, Crossover Pairings, F/M, Romance, Time Paradoxes, Time Travel, Timelines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-03-04 13:20:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 16,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3069608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CMRRosa/pseuds/CMRRosa, https://archiveofourown.org/users/RockSunner/pseuds/RockSunner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A crossover between "The Incredibles" and "Meet the Robinsons." Violet Parr and Wilbur Robinson find out that time travel can change the destiny of superheroes, too. Written in collaboration with CMRRosa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prelude: Inspiration Failures

Lewis said, "My mother is the only person who ever wanted me. I have to find her, Mildred. And when I do she'll take me back, and we'll be a family again!"

He was up on the roof of the orphanage, where he always went after he failed an adoption interview. He had made a new mark on his tally box: one hundred and twenty-four failed interviews. The Harringtons had been the worst disaster yet. He had nearly killed Mr. Harrington by accidentally spraying him with peanut butter from his jammed PB+J machine, not knowing Mr. Harrington had a peanut allergy.

There wasn't a chance in a million he would get adopted before he turned thirteen, and after he became a teenager his chances were worse than that. Finding his birth mother was his only hope now.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, Lewis. You can't do that. Nobody knows anything about her. Nobody even saw her," said Mildred.

"You're wrong. I saw her, once. It's in here," Lewis said, tapping his head. "I just have to remember."

He looked across the street at a large movie poster for "The Weird West." No inspiration there. He shut his eyes tight and tried to remember as hard as he could. Nothing happened; no images came to his mind at all.

"It's hopeless," he said with a sigh. "I might as well give up. I have no future."

"Don't ever say that," said Mildred. "Someone like you has every hope for a bright future. Just keep moving forward."

Lewis moped through a week of school before there was any ray of hope. Mr. Willerstein, his science teacher, gave him a flyer.

"Inventco Presents: Science Fair. First prize – Apprenticeship with Inventco for one year."

One more chance. If he couldn't have a family, he could still make a future for himself. There wasn't much time left. He would have to do something simple. Maybe he could rework his PB+J machine. It was an impressive invention, as long as it didn't jam and explode again.

His roommate Goob would help. Goob loved peanut butter, and he would be delighted to work on something simple that didn't cut into his sleep and interfere with his baseball games.

* * *

A few years later, another boy stood on the roof of the same orphanage. He saw Mr. Incredible race down the block in his Incredicar.

Buddy Pine longed to follow, but there was no way he could catch up. He had been dreaming of becoming Incrediboy, the adopted ward of Mr. Incredible, his sidekick to help him in all his adventures. He had made one wall of his room into a shrine to Mr. Incredible, with a huge poster and all the newspaper clippings he could find.

But to be Incrediboy he had to have something to make himself a real asset. The rocket skates he had tried to make so that he could keep up with his hero were a failure. Buddy was brilliant with machinery, but he just hadn't found the right inspiration.

He heard on the news that night that Mr. Incredible had saved a cat that was stuck in a tree, stopped escaping bank robbers with the same tree, caught a tour bus robber (with the help of Elastigirl), stopped a suicide jumper without causing him any injuries, and caught Bomb Voyage in the act of robbing a bank. All in a day's work for the superhero. After that, Mr. Incredible went off duty for the night. No doubt he had a nice evening lined up in his secret identity, too.

Buddy threw away his Incrediboy costume. It just wasn't going to work. He would have to make his own future without Mr. Incredible.

As Mildred always said, "Keep moving forward."


	2. Violet Meets Wilbur

Violet sat alone in the lunchroom of her new elementary school. Her family had just enrolled her there, in this new charter Montessori school, in the middle of the semester.

They thought she could do well here because she was bright and could learn at her own pace. It was terrible, because all the other kids had already made friends and ten-year-olds weren't nice to the new girl.

She hated being called names. Someone started calling her 'Shrinking Violet' because of how she tried to hide herself and not be noticed, and the name had stuck. She was the shy kid, the loner, the geek. She wanted to do well in school, not try to make the teachers miserable. What was wrong with that?

The other girls played house and the boys played superheroes. Violet smiled. Someday she would go into action as a superhero herself.

Three years ago, when she was seven, she shocked herself by making her face disappear while she was looking in the mirror. She thought she had died and become a ghost. She cried and her mother came running to comfort her. Soon they found that she could not only turn invisible but also project purple force fields. Her six-year old brother, Dash, had super-speed; he could run so fast you could barely see him.

Her parents encouraged her and Dash to practice their powers in secret. But they weren't allowed to show powers in public, unmasked. Superheroes have to maintain a secret identity. It was the only way to have a normal life and not be targeted by old enemies of her father, Mr. Incredible, or her mother, Elastigirl. Even though their real last name was Parr, they had papers in the name of Armstrong. The government helped them keep their secret in return for occasional secret missions.

So Violet Armstrong had to hide everything that made her special, everything that might have won her some friends. She put a homework paper on the table beside her school lunch so she would have something to do while she ate. Learning at her own pace let her work ahead, and today she was trying to learn division.

She was struggling to divide 77 by 6 when she felt a tap on her shoulder. She gave a jump of surprise, bumping into the boy behind her, who nearly dropped his tray, but just managed to keep hold of it.

"Are you usually this jumpy?" the boy asked.

His hair was black, just like hers. It had a cowlick standing nearly straight up from his head. He wore a black shirt with a lightning bolt in a blue circle on the front, blue jeans, and a light brown jacket.

"No, but I don't usually have people sneak up behind me like that," said Violet.

The boy looked like he was about to make an angry retort, but his expression softened. "Sorry about that. I just wanted to ask if I could sit at this table with you. I'm new to the school, too."

Violet brushed back her long hair that usually hid the right side of her face. "Fine with me," she said, trying to keep cool and aloof.

"I'm Wilbur," said the boy. "Wilbur Robinson."

"I'm Violet Armstrong. Are you any relation to Cornelius Robinson, the inventor?"

"He's my dad," said Wilbur. "How about that? It's not everyday you meet a guy related to someone famous."

"If you only knew how famous my Dad is," thought Violet, but she just smiled and said nothing.

Wilbur sat down across the table from her.

As he did, a big blond-haired kid bumped into him as he walked past. Violet recognized him as Buster Harris, a real jerk. Even a Montessori school had bullies, and he was the worst.

"Well, look who's sitting together. Shrinking Violet and Pointy Head. A geek and a freak," Buster sneered. "You better start handing over your lunch money to me, starting tomorrow."

"I don't think you'd better mess with us," said Wilbur. He pulled a doughnut-sized ring from his pocket and tossed it at the bully's feet. It expanded to the size of a hula hoop.

"What's that?" asked Buster.

"It's an experimental portable bubble-transport, like the ride at TodayLand," said Wilbur. "When I give the signal it will blow a bubble around you, lift you to the ceiling, and then pop, dropping you to the floor."

"I don't believe it, geek," said Buster.

Wilbur reached into his pocket and pressed the button of a remote control. The machine began to hum and a purple glowing bubble started to form in the loop.

Buster backed away from the glowing device. "I give," he said. He turned and ran.

"That did better than I expected," said Wilbur to Violet. "I was only expecting a little hum to bluff him with."

Violet smiled. "You did great, Wilbur."

She wasn't going to tell him that she had supplied a bit of glowing force-field to add to the effect.

"We ought to join forces," said Wilbur. "Are you with me?"

"Yeah," said Violet. "If what you mean is, let's be friends."

Wilbur smiled and said, "Sure!"

That's how they first met.

They seemed like total opposites, but they grew to be best friends. Violet was shy, sweet, withdrawn, and very smart. Wilbur was outspoken, wild, and didn't care about school in spite of his scientific father. But they complemented each other and learned from each other. Violet learned to have more confidence and to stand up for herself. Wilbur learned when to tone it down and keep himself out of trouble. Nobody could bring out the scholar in Wilbur but Violet, and nobody could bring out the wild side of Violet like Wilbur.

In a few years the sparks were going to fly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter draws much of its inspiration from _Meet The Incredibles: Two Worlds Collide_ by iKatnissStarkWestoftheFlock, used by permission of the author.
> 
> Like that story, this story uses a combined time-line that allows Violet and Wilbur to be contemporaries.
> 
> Other than a voice-over in a movie trailer, there's no real internal evidence that Wilbur lives in 2037. In fact, there's substantial evidence that he lives earlier. The tech level for young Lewis seems wrong for 2007. A movie advertised as being in "Dazzling Color"? Clunky CRT desktop computers instead of flat-screens?
> 
> The city, Municiberg, has not been completely replaced by a city of the future. Michael Yagoobian was using the abandoned orphanage as his lair. "Todayland" may be exactly what it looks like - a theme park showcasing inventions of Robinson Industries, which may not have been widely adopted yet. The bubble transport is a theme park ride, not a common replacement for cars.
> 
> The tech level of Violet's day can be nudged forward a little. There's certainly high-tech around for some supervillains. Other than a couple of superhero death dates, which we will conveniently ignore, there's not much to date "The Incredibles" either.


	3. Dinner with the Robinsons

"How do you think it will go at dinner tonight?" Violet asked Wilbur on her cell phone. "Your family won't be too... strange, will they?"

"They'll be themselves, and everything will be fine," said Wilbur.

"It was my fault," Violet said. "It slipped out that we're talking about dating, so my mom wanted to meet your family. She's always treating me like a little kid. I'm thirteen, and I should be able to see who I like without her checking everybody out. Where's her trust?"

"So you and your folks come to dinner tonight. What's the worst that could happen?" asked Wilbur.

"Don't say that. You'll jinx it," said Violet.

Soon Helen and Bob gathered the family together. Violet's younger brother, baby Jack-Jack, was in Helen's arms.

"I want all of you to be on your best behavior," said Helen. "No pranks, Dash, nothing at high speed. We have secret identities to maintain. Promise, all of you, not to use any powers."

"No problem here," said Dash.

"We'll be careful, Mom," said Violet. "What about Jack-Jack?"

"He hasn't manifested any powers yet, and hopefully that will continue tonight," said Helen.

"It doesn't feel right somehow, keeping secrets from Wilbur... and his family," said Violet. "You're expecting to find out all about them, but keep our big secret to ourselves."

"We have to, for our own protection," said Bob. "Your mother and I have made a lot of enemies over the years that are looking for revenge."

"It's just sad that I have to hide such a big part of myself from Wilbur," said Violet.

"I bet you'd like to show all sorts of parts of yourself to Wilbur," Dash said.

"You rude little brat! Mom, make him stop teasing me!" said Violet. She grabbed at Dash, but he sped out of the way and raced around her until she got a force-field ball under his feet and made him trip.

"Enough," said their father, picking up each by the collar with one hand.

"Dash, that was very rude," said Helen. "Violet, it was still no excuse to attack him. Leave each other alone or there will be consequences."

They all piled into the car and drove to the Robinson's home, set among green fields and an elaborate topiary garden.

"This is a fancy place," said Helen. "I hope I'm dressed all right for them, not too informal."

"Don't worry about that. The Robinsons aren't formal at all," said Violet.

Her words were proved an understatement when the family got to the front door. Two heads popped up from the planters on each side of the door.

"Ring my doorbell," said the one on the right.

"No, ring mine," said the one on the left.

"Let's ring both," suggested Helen. She and Bob each pressed a doorbell at the same time.

"No fair," said the one on the right. "That keeps the score tied."

"No it doesn't, Spike," said the one on the left. "Mine was pressed an instant sooner, so I win."

"If either was sooner, it was mine, Dmitri," said Spike. "So I win."

The door was opened by an enormous purple octopus with one yellow eye.

Bob got into a fighting stance, "A monster! Stay back; I'll deal with this."

"That's just our butler, Lefty," said Spike.

"I knew that. I was just kidding," said Bob with a weak grin. "Imagine, me trying to fight a monster."

"Careful, honey," said Helen softly. "They're eccentric rich folks. Expect the unexpected, and don't rush into anything."

Soon they had met everyone: Bud, Wilbur's grandfather, with gray hair sticking out on both sides, and a face drawn on back of head; His wife Lucille, who liked to bake cookies using a dance-driven oven; Franny Robinson, the singing frog-training wife of Cornelius Robinson (he had to be out of town for unexpected business); her brother Gaston, who liked to shoot himself from cannons; her brother Art, who delivered pizza in a costume similar to the ones the Incredibles wore; Bud's brother Joe, a coach potato on a flying couch; Joe's wife Billie, who raced life-sized toy trains; Bud's brother Fritz, who was henpecked by his wooden puppet wife, Petunia; Fritz's daughter Talullah, who wore a skyscraper hat with a monkey named Kong living in it; Fritz's son Laszlo, a painter who created art using a paint gun while flying around with a propeller on his head; and a bendy-armed robot belonging to Wilbur, named Carl.

"You all seem to live your dreams," said Helen. "I admire that."

"We do," Franny said. "How about you? Do you make time for self-expression?"

"I think so," said Helen with a smile. "Raising a family is a dream in itself for me."

"Speaking of dreams, I've always wanted to be shot out of a cannon," said Bob. "May I try that, Gaston?"

"Better not, Bob," said Helen. "What if you did something that would hurt, and we had to rush you to the hospital?"

"That wouldn't happen," said Bob.

"Of course not. My cannons are perfectly safe... almost," said Gaston.

"No, Bob," said Helen firmly. "I-dentity think it's a good idea." (She said this quickly so "identity" sounded like "I don't really".)

Carl served dinner, using a lot of little Carls that popped out of his chest and delivered bowls of beef curry to all.

As the family ate, a cell-phone call came in for Franny. "Experiment DOR-15 has escaped? Is it dangerous?... I see. I doubt it's anything to worry about. It's just a hat."

"A hat escaped?" Violet asked.

"Doris is a helping hat my husband invented, Violet. It has a built-in brain scanner so it can anticipate the needs of its wearer. Somehow it got a mind of its own and ran amok. But it's just a hat. I doubt it can do much harm."

"Maybe a superhero will find and destroy it," Bob said.

"If we're lucky," said Franny.

Dinner was over, and Wilbur asked, "Would it be all right if Violet and I took a walk around the garden in the moonlight?"

"All right," said Franny, "If you go through the garage on your way out and take out the trash."

"Way to kill the mood, Mom," said Wilbur.

"It's your chore, so no back-talk," said Franny. "And make sure to lock the garage door after you, or the security system won't engage."

As they walked through the garage, Violet noticed two flying-saucer-like machines. "What are those?"

"Time machines. They're inventions of my dad's. After tons of failures, those are his first two successes."

"Wow, working time machines. Your dad's incredible, Wilbur," said Violet.

"You're family's incredible, too," said Wilbur.

"You think so? Why?" asked Violet.

"Because they have you," said Wilbur.

They took out the trash, but they were so caught up with each other that neither remembered to lock the garage door. As they walked in the garden, a small bowler hat slipped through the bushes toward them.

They held hands and breathed in the cool evening air. The garden was lovely, the mood was perfect, and their faces moved closer together...

"Violet and Wilbur sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G," said Dash, appearing suddenly behind them.

"How did you get here? I didn't see you following us," said Wilbur.

"He's fast, and sneaky," said Violet. "Go away, you little spy."

There was a rustling noise from the bushes.

"What was that?" Wilbur asked.

"Let's check it out," said Dash.

"Hold on," said Violet. "No need to rush into danger."

She texted her father's phone, "some1 near garage."

There was a sequence of beeping sounds, as if the thing in the bushes was trying to talk to them.

Dash caught glimpse of it. "It's Doris, the rogue helping hat! We've got to stop it."

Doris flew out of the bushes, apparently giving up on trying to communicate with them and treating them as a threat instead. She rushed toward them, extending spinning claws from under her brim.

Violet and Dash were ready to blow their cover if they had to, but it wasn't necessary. Mr. Incredible leaped to the rescue, landing on the hat and smashing it flat.

"You kids are lucky I happened to be on patrol. I spotted you in trouble," said Mr. Incredible.

"Thank you, Mr. Incredible," said Violet.

Violet was relieved: she hadn't had to expose her secret identity.

Things were going to be all right. This time at least.


	4. Captain Time Travel

Violet and Wilbur went to "Dining for Two," their favorite restaurant for romantic dates. They were in the same college but in different dorms, so they didn't get to be with each other as often as they wanted. Wilbur was ready for that to change.

"You know, Violet, we've been seeing each other for quite a while now..." said Wilbur.

"Six and a half years," said Violet.

"I have something to ask you," said Wilbur.

He produced a small square box.

"Oh, Wilbur..."

"Press the button on top," Wilbur said.

She did, and a small robotic arm popped out, holding a diamond ring. Violet gave a little yelp.

"Trust you to turn it into an electronic practical joke," Violet said.

"But I mean it. Will you marry me?" Wilbur asked.

"I want to say yes, and I will after I tell you something important. If you still want to," said Violet.

"What could you say that would change how I feel about you?" asked Wilbur.

She lowered her voice, "I'm a superhero."

"You're teasing me..." Wilbur said.

She held out a hand on the table and made her fingers disappear before his eyes.

"I-Invisigirl?" Wilbur asked.

"Invisiwoman now," said Violet. "I'm a woman, you can testify to that."

"You most certainly are," said Wilbur. "But I've known you all this time, and you never said anything?"

"Secret identity issues," said Violet. "But since we're going to be married you have to know."

"I guess this explains all the times you were late for dates, or missed them, and weren't where you said you would be," said Wilbur.

"I was fighting crime. It's my duty – you know, with great power comes great responsibility," said Violet.

"What about your responsibility to be honest with the person you care about? You lied to me," said Wilbur.

"You don't understand; I was afraid you wouldn't. But I'm being honest now," said Violet.

"It's a little late, don't you think? Here I am proposing to you, and it turns out I hardly know you at all. I know a false persona, while the real you is out bouncing bullets off your force shields. You could be killed. Just one time bringing up a force field too slowly, and..."

"I'm good at this, Wilbur. I practice," said Violet.

"You could have died out there. Could still die any night on patrol," said Wilbur.

"It sounds like I'm not what you signed up for. Consider the engagement off, then," said Violet. "I have to go."

"Wait, that's not what I meant. I still love you. I just have to process this," said Wilbur.

"You'll never understand unless you become a superhero yourself," said Violet. "I don't see that happening anytime soon."

She slipped away from the table, and by the time Wilbur could pay and leave she was gone.

"I'll become a hero, if that's what it takes," said Wilbur to himself.

* * *

The next day, Wilbur visited his father in his workshop.

"Dad, do you still have that personal portable time-machine you developed after the car ones? And is it safe to use?" Wilbur asked.

"It depends on how you use it, son," said Cornelius. "There's a reason I never released any of my time-travel inventions to the public. Time travel is extremely dangerous."

"How is it dangerous?" Wilbur asked.

Cornelius pulled up a whiteboard and sketched a river with a marker. "Time is like a river. It flows along its channel, and normally stays there. Going back in time and making a change is like throwing a rock upstream. Most of the time nothing much will happen, but changes can build up that divert the course of the river altogether."

"And that's not good?" Wilbur asked.

"It can change it enough so that you will never exist. It's the old grandfather paradox; that can actually happen. Going back in time and killing your own grandfather before he has any children is a fancy way to commit suicide. You would be wiped out of existence."

"But then I couldn't go back and kill him, so he would be alive again," said Wilbur.

"That's what they used to say, but my experiments show otherwise. There's a conservation of flow around that sort of external change. The change persists even though the cause is removed. So your grandfather would remain dead, and you wouldn't exist, and that would remain the case unless another time traveler went back and prevented it."

"Are there any other dangers?" Will asked.

"There are a couple of others, but I built in safety precautions for them. One is upsetting history in a way that makes things worse, but without destroying yourself. When you make a change in the past, the changes are carried forward by quantum packets – I call them bubbles, because that's what they look like. They move through the time-stream at a finite 'speed' and alter everything to match the new time-line, including people's memories. In my time machines, the memories of the time-travelers are temporarily bubble-proofed. Your mind resists any bubbles that flow through in the next few hours after time-travel. That way you can see if something has gone wrong and correct it."

"And the other danger?" Wilbur asked.

"Taking someone out of the past and moving them by time-machine is a perilous operation. Effectively that person will not exist from then on, until he or she is put back. Bubbles will flow out from that point, unless something stops them. My machines are built with an automatic time dam, stopping the flow of bubbles until the person is restored, or the dam breaks."

"What happens if the dam breaks?" Wilbur asked.

"Very bad things. I don't want to find out," said Cornelius. "At the very least the changes resulting from that person disappearing from history will bubble through. Worst case might be a time flood which wrecks everything in its path."

"So, may I borrow the time machine?" Wilbur asked.

"After all that, you still want to risk it?" Cornelius asked.

"It's important to me. It's something I want to do for Violet," said Wilbur.

"Violet has been a good influence on you, Wilbur," said Cornelius. "If she's involved I'll trust that you will use the invention safely."

* * *

Wilbur prepared his costume carefully. He had designed a black vest with a blue circle on the front, with a yellow lightning bolt crossing the circle. He wore it over a blue long-sleeved shirt, and blue spandex pants. On his hands were red gloves. He also wore a yellow cape with epaulettes on his shoulders. Capes were out of fashion these days for some reason, but they were all the rage for the period in which he intended to work. Besides, the cape allowed him to conceal the personal portable time-machine on his back, as well as anti-gravity flying equipment.

No mask was required, because nobody back then would know his face. But he concealed his black hair with its characteristic spike, using a brown wig. There was no need to invite reprisals on any of his relatives who lived back then and had similar hair.

He studied his stack of print-outs of old newspaper articles for the cases in which he had chosen to intervene. Like the science-fiction story of time-traveling dinosaur hunters who only hunted dinosaur about to die, he would only catch crooks who were about to be caught anyway. He figured he could build up some superhero experience and glory without changing the past too much.

Besides the time-traveler's advantage of hindsight, he had a few more futuristic tricks up his sleeve. There was a capturing bubble-blower, a high-powered flash gun, and his flying equipment. Besides that, he had figured out how to use the time-machine to slow time around him so he could move very quickly.

First was a bank robbery. The robbers were due to walk out into the hands of the police because a teller pushed a silent alarm. He would get there first. He went to the bank and dialed himself back in time using the controls concealed in his left epaulette.

"Captain Time Travel is just in time!" was his catch-phrase as he arrived. He created a lifting bubble around two of the robbers. Where was the third?

Oh, right behind him. He felt a gun pressing into his back.

"Hands up, superhero," said the robber.

As he raised his hands, Captain Time Travel triggered his time-slowing device at maximum, using a control in his right glove. He spun and took the gun away from the man before it could fire. He pointed it up at the ceiling and let the normal flow of time resume. The gun went off into the ceiling; that was close.

He bubbled up the third robber. A minute later the police arrived to take them in.

"You're a new hero, aren't you?" asked one officer. "I haven't seen you around before."

"I'm Captain Time Travel. From the future."

"Good work, Captain, but be careful," said the officer. "I heard a gunshot."

"When I need to be, I can be faster than a speeding bullet," said Captain Time Travel.

He carried out a few more missions, upstaging the local superheros in several cases. After the last case, the press gathered around and asked for an interview, which he granted.

"Captain Time Travel, are you really from the future?" asked a reporter in a turquoise dress.

"Yes, I am," said the Captain.

"What can you tell us about the technology of the future?" asked another reporter, wearing thick glasses.

"I'm not at liberty to talk about that."

"What about a failed invention? That couldn't hurt anything?"

"All right, I'll tell you about the time I was up against a rogue helping hat."

"A helping hat?"

"A robot built into a bowler hat, with a built-in brain scanner to anticipate the needs of its owner. It also had robotic claws so it could run around and grab things."

"That sounds dangerous."

"It was, but I was able to defeat it. No more helping hats were ever produced."

* * *

A screen-writer was listening to the TV news.

"I've got it!" she told her husband. "'The Menace of the Helping Hats' would be a great sci-fi horror movie. Suppose a bunch of them got loose. With their brain scanners they could take over people's minds, and take over the world!"

"Too far-fetched. Nobody would believe that. I think you should lose the hat angle, but the brain scanner idea is good," her husband said.

"Brain Scanners from Outer Space," said the writer. "I know I can sell that concept."

* * *

Up on the roof of the orphanage, Mildred was trying to talk Lewis out of trying to find his birth mother.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, Lewis. You can't do that. Nobody knows anything about her. Nobody even saw her," said Mildred.

"You're wrong. I saw her, once. It's in here," Lewis said, tapping his head. "I just have to remember."

He looked across the street at a large movie poster for "Brain Scanners from Mars."

"That's it!" he said.


	5. Time-Machine Theft

Violet's family met the Robinsons for dinner. When dinner was over, Wilbur asked, "Would it be all right if Violet and I took a walk around the garden in the moonlight?"

"All right," said Franny, "If you go through the garage on your way out and take out the trash."

"Way to kill the mood, Mom," said Wilbur.

"It's your chore, so no back-talk," said Franny. "And make sure to lock the garage door after you, or the security system won't engage."

As they walked through the garage, Violet and Wilbur talked about the two time-machines parked there, and how awesome each other's families were.

They took out the trash, but they were so caught up with each other that neither remembered to lock the garage door. As they walked in the garden, a villainous man wearing a bowler hat slipped into the garage.

They held hands and breathed in the cool evening air. The garden was lovely, the mood was perfect, and their faces moved closer together...

"Violet and Wilbur sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G," said Dash, appearing suddenly behind them.

"How did you get here? I didn't see you following us," said Wilbur.

"He's fast, and sneaky," said Violet. "Go away, you little spy."

One of the time machines flew out of the garage. The man in the bowler hat gave an evil laugh as he jetted away and opened a portal to the past.

"I am so dead," said Wilbur. "I was supposed to remember to lock the garage, and now one of the time machines is gone."

"You have the other time machine. Maybe you can go after it and get it back," said Violet.

"Maybe," said Wilbur. "What the thief doesn't know is that there's a module in the first time-machine that shares memory with the other. In fact, all the computers in the house are linked and back each other up. If we're lucky, I can find out where he went."

"May I go with you? Two heads are better than one," said Violet.

"Three heads," said Dash. "I want a cool time travel adventure too, or I'll run and tell Mom."

"You wouldn't," said Violet.

"I would too," said Dash.

"I'd rather do this alone," said Wilbur. "But if the alternative is getting told on... you can both come. We've got to leave right now. This bowler hat guy could wreck things in the past and change the present."

They got into the other time-machine and Wilbur brought up the coordinates. "Thirty years ago. He specifically looked up the address of a science fair held by Inventco... oh no."

"What is it?" asked Violet.

"That's the day my dad won the science fair with a brain scanner, and the day he first met my grandparents, the Robinsons, who adopted him. He could miss the big event that changed his life. It could change my life too... into not existing at all!"

"No!" said Violet.

"The way that super-villain was laughing, that may be exactly what he has in mind," said Dash.

"Super-villain?" asked Wilbur.

"Cape, evil laugh..." said Violet. "He's a villain, anyway. And time-travel is a super power, like that famous superhero of the early days, Captain Time Travel."

"That guy's my favorite hero. I even have his logo on my tee shirt," said Wilbur.

"Enough chatter. Let's go!" said Dash impatiently.

Wilbur revved up the time-machine and they took off after the Bowler Hat Guy. Destination: Municiberg thirty years ago.


	6. Science Fair

They landed the time machine in an alley next to the InventCo Science Fair, and Wilbur turned on the cloaking device.

"You guys should leave this to me," said Wilbur. "The situation calls for finesse."

"I'm good at physical finesse," said Dash.

"Not fitness, genius," said Violet. "Okay, Wilbur. We'll stay out unless you need backup."

Wilbur went inside.

Dash asked, "Are we really going to stay out of it? He could use help from our powers if the super villain attacks."

Violet said, "I know, but I don't want to compromise our secret identities yet. I'm going to sneak in invisibly and look for that Bowler Hat Guy. You stay here."

"If you're getting in on the fun, so will I," said Dash. "I can run in without anyone seeing me."

They argued for a few minutes, until they heard a crash.

Wilbur had tried to talk to the young inventor Lewis, his future father. That hadn't gone very well. Then Wilbur thought he saw the Bowler Hat Guy, and charged him, but it turned out to be another science fair contestant with a solar system exhibit. The resulting crash knocked over a box of frogs, and Wilbur was stuck picking them up under the watchful eye of the young girl who owned them, who somehow reminded him of his mother.

Dash ran over quickly, in street clothes, to help Wilbur with the frogs. Violet came in a little later, invisible, having stripped to her costume. She joined the group that was starting to watch Lewis demonstrate his scanner.

"Have you ever forgotten something, and no matter how hard you tried you couldn't remember it?" Lewis said. "Well, what happens to these forgotten memories? I propose they're stored somewhere in your brain. I built a machine that can retrieve them. I call it... the memory scanner."

Violet thought she heard something moving under the cloth covering the exhibit, and she moved closer to investigate. But Lewis pulled off the cover and there was nothing, so she relaxed.

Lewis entered a date on his control panel, which Wilbur noticed was housed in a Captain Time Travel lunchbox. He turned on the machine and it started to warm up.

"It will just take a second to get the turbines going."

The machine started to vibrate, and a spinning propeller came loose. It flew into the air before Violet could catch it in a force-field bubble. It flew into one of the electric lights on the ceiling, setting off sparks that ignited the Mount Vesuvius exhibit.

"She's gonna blow!" Stanley cried out.

Dash went to super-speed and grabbed it, and looked around for a way to get it away from the crowd safely. He saw an exit door directly behind Lewis, and he ran for that.

Violet realized Dash wouldn't have enough control at that speed to avoid injuring Lewis, possibly destroying the future father of Wilbur. She threw up a force field around herself, Lewis and his broken machine. Dash ran into that, slipping and dropping the the volcano, which exploded with hot orange jelly all over the people in front of the machine: Mr. Willerstein, Dr. Lucille Krunklehorn, and the gym coach. A glob from the volcano hit the fire ant farm brought by a girl named Lizzie, and the ant farm fell to the ground and broke open. There were fire ants all over the floor, and some went up on people's legs and bit them, adding to the panic. Then the hot "lava" set off the sprinklers. Everyone had to evacuate the gym.

"I'm sorry," Lewis said. "I had no idea that would happen."

"Not now, Lewis," said Mr. Willerstein.

Lewis went sadly out the exit, leaving his memory scanner behind.

Violet slipped out invisibly and back into her day clothes at the time machine. Dash joined her after picking up many of the spilled fire ants at high speed and getting them back into their ant farm.

Wilbur came running out. "It was a disaster! That machine wasn't supposed to fall apart, much less pull in that volcano and make it explode. The Bowler Hat Guy sabotaged it. We've got to stop my dad from giving up, or he won't get adopted, and then his future will be different and I won't exist."

"We can still fix this. We have to," Violet said.

As he started up the time machine in local hover mode, Wilbur said, "I could have sworn I saw two people in red costumes appear just as the volcano exploded. They looked like Invisigirl and Dasher, but that's impossible."

"You did see them," said Violet. "My brother and I are superheros, and we were trying to help."

"Some help," said Wilbur. "You made things incredibly worse."

"We can still fix this. We have to," Dash said.

"You stay out of it. I'll talk my dad into coming back, fixing his machine, and getting his life back on course."


	7. Convincing Lewis

"All this time I've known you, and you never told me you were superheros?" Wilbur asked, still irritated with Violet and Dash.

"It's a secret identity. We try to keep it unless there's an emergency, like this was. I'm sorry, Wilbur. It doesn't change how I feel about you," said Violet.

"It doesn't change how I feel either, really," said Wilbur. "It's kind of cool to be dating a superhero. But please leave the rest to me. I can handle it."

Dash pulled out a thick manual from the glove compartment. "Have you read the manual for this time-machine thing?"

Wilbur said, "No. Are you kidding?"

"I don't like reading in school much, but I can speed-read when I have to," Dash said. He flipped through the book, reading over 1000 pages in a few seconds as they flew in the time machine.

"Where are we going?" Violet asked.

"Dad used to tell me that he headed to the roof of the orphanage whenever he felt discouraged. That's where we'll find him now," said Wilbur.

He flew the time machine a little way below the roof, where he could jump from the hood of the vehicle and catch the edge of the roof.

"You wait here while I talk to him," Wilbur said.

Wilbur sneaked up and hid to watch Lewis. He saw Lewis crumple up the picture of the brain scanner and throw it in his direction. Lewis acrobatically rolled out of his hiding place, threw it back to Lewis, and rolled back into hiding.

"Hey, what are you doing up here?" Lewis asked.

Wilbur just cooed like an pigeon. Lewis moved quietly up to the hiding place and dropped the paper again. Wilbur rushed out, pressed the paper into his hand, and ducked back out of sight, cooing some more.

"Will you quit that, please? I know you're not a pigeon," said Lewis angrily.

"Ssh! You're blowing my cover," said Wilbur.

"We're the only ones up here," said Lewis.

"That's just what they want you to think," said Wilbur. He started trying to persuade Lewis to go back to the science fair and fix his brain scanner, but Lewis was having none of it. He wasn't convinced by the tanning salon coupon Wilbur tried to flash as a time cop badge, either. It just made him think Wilbur was insane, the more he spouted off about the Bowler Hat Guy.

"You're crazy!" said Lewis.

"Ho ho! I am not crazy," said Wilbur.

"Oh yeah, Captain Time Travel? Prove it," said Lewis.

"Ah... um..."

"That's what I thought," said Lewis. He headed for the stairs to his room, to lock himself in and keep away from this crazy guy.

Wilbur rushed ahead and barred his way. "If I prove to you I'm from the future, will you go back to the science fair?"

"Yeah, sure. Whatever you say," said Lewis with complete disbelief.

He started for the stairs again, but Wilbur grabbed him and ran with him toward the edge of the roof.

"What are you doing? Let go of me!" Lewis shouted, but he couldn't stop the madman who was apparently going to throw him off the roof to his death.

Violet became visible in Wilbur's path, in her mask and red costume. Dash blurred up beside Wilbur and pulled on him to stop his run.

"Stop that, you're scaring him," said Violet.

Lewis screamed. "This is a nightmare, or I've gone nuts!"

"Calm down," said Violet. We're superheros from the future and we're here to help."

"Then arrest this crazy guy. He was going to kill me!"

"He's all right, he's with us," said Dash.

Lewis looked like he was going to scream again.

"He's..." Violet thought for an instant, and pointed to the logo on Wilbur's chest. "He's the young version of Captain Time Travel, still a bit immature."

"Young version?" asked Lewis.

"It's complicated. Time travel, you know," said Wilbur, going along with the story (which none of the time travelers knew was actually the truth).

"So... it's all true? A guy stole a time machine and wrecked my invention?" asked Lewis.

"Yes," Violet said. "We tried to help, but things went wrong. We need you to go back there and fix the machine. The future depends on it."

"All right, you've convinced me," Lewis said.

"We have?" Wilbur said. "Oh... good. We'll fly you back to the science fair in my time machine."

They revealed the cloaked machine to Lewis, who was suitably impressed.

"You weren't going to throw me off the roof, were you, Captain Time Travel? You were just going to show me your time machine," said Lewis.

"Something like that," said Wilbur.

* * *

Back at the science fair they discovered a new problem. The scanner was gone! Nobody had seen anything because the thief struck while the gym was evacuated.

"What are we going to do? This will change the future!" said Wilbur.

Dash said, "Not if we take him to the future with us now. I read the manual. It will make a time dam that will hold back changes while we regroup."

"Maybe we can use your father's technology to scan for the Bowler Hat Guy, even if he's left this time period," said Violet.

"How about it, Lewis?" said Wilbur in a Captain Time Travel voice. "Want to see the future?"

"All right, if you'll take me to see my mother when this is over. I mean, see her on the day she left me at the orphanage."

"Sure, we can do that," Wilbur falsely promised.

"Then let's go!" said Dash. "Time's a wasting!"

They got back into the machine and set the controls for the future.


	8. Crashed

On arrival in the future, Wilbur flew Lewis around the theme-park city of the future, Todayland. Wonders were everywhere, from instant buildings to flying bubble transports.

Violet thought, "It's more impressive than the actual city. It changed and modernized in the years since Lewis grew up, but not this much."

"Is this proof enough for you?" asked Wilbur.

"Is it ever! I never thought time travel would be possible in my lifetime, and here it is, right in front of me," said Lewis.

"The truth will set you free, brother," said Wilbur.

"This is beyond anything I could have imagined. It means I can change my life," said Lewis.

"Right, you can. Next stop, science fair, to fix your memory scanner," said Wilbur.

"I'm not going to fix my memory scanner," said Lewis.

Wilbur put on the brakes, in shock.

"What?" said Violet.

"Why not?" asked Dash.

"This is a time-machine. Why should I fix my dumb invention when you could take me back to see my mom in this ship?"

"Umm, uh," stammered Wilbur.

"We can even go back to that night, stop her from giving me up..."

"No! The answer is not a time-machine. It's this!" said Wilbur, holding out the paper with the invention plans.

"You want to know what I think about this?" Lewis said, starting to rip the paper up.

Violet put out a bubble to catch the torn pieces. Her future happiness with Wilbur was at stake if Lewis changed his past. Should she tell him?

"You don't understand..." Violet began.

Lewis pushed forward to seize the controls. "It's you who don't understand what I've been through."

Dash zipped forward to stop him. The sudden shift in weight threw everyone forward, Wilbur's knee struck a lever that threw the vehicle out of hover mode, and they raced toward the ground. The vehicle wasn't designed for so many passengers; lacking room, they got all tangled up with each other. Violet threw a bubble around the passengers to protect them, but the machine was wrecked on impact.

"I am so dead," said Wilbur. "I'm not allowed to look at this thing, let alone drive it. Mom and Dad are going to kill me, and it will not be done with mercy."

"But you said you were Captain Time Travel," said Wilbur.

"In the future," said Violet, regretting her lie.

"Now I'm just dead meat," said Wilbur. "And you and Dash are too, Violet. This is the day after you came over for dinner. As far as your folks know, you disappeared last night."

"Yikes!" said Dash.

"We've got to fix the time-stream first, then we'll worry about that," said Violet.

"Is there a time-machine repair shop around here somewhere?" Lewis asked.

"There are only two time-machines in existence, and the Bowler Hat Guy has the other one," said Wilbur.

"Maybe Lewis can fix it. After all, he invented... I mean, he's good with inventions," said Violet.

"Are you kidding? All my inventions fail, and I don't know the first thing about time-machines," said Lewis.

"You broke it, you fix it," said Wilbur.

"All right, under one condition. I fix it, you take me back to see my Mom," said Lewis.

"How can I trust you when you broke our last deal?" asked Wilbur.

"You told me you were a time cop from the future. How can I trust you?" Lewis asked.

"Touche," said Wilbur. He pondered what to say next.

"Come on guys, hurry up," said Dash.

"Right," said Violet. "We can't stay out here forever."

"So, do we have a deal or not?" said Lewis, holding out his hand.

"Okay," said Wilbur, shaking his hand.

With the help of the two superheroes, the time-machine was quickly moved to the entrance to the Robinson's garage. Carl, the family robot, demanded a password, but he gave up when he realized there was no way Wilbur could know it since he had just made it up while Wilbur was away.

"Wow, a real robot," Lewis said, walking up to Carl. "My name is Lewis."

"Yaaah!" the robot screamed. He ran away and jetted up a tube, still screaming.

Wilbur jammed a Carmen-Miranda-style fruit hat on Wilbur's head. "Your hair's a dead give-away you're from the past. My family will kill me and dance on my grave if they knew I brought someone from the past."

"Why?" said Lewis.

"An excellent question," said Wilbur, heading for the tube to catch up with Carl.

"Where are you going?" asked Wilbur.

"Another excellent question," said Wilbur, zipping up the tube.

An instant later, Wilbur zipped back down. "Violet and Dash, keep him out of trouble."

"All right, Wilbur," said Violet.

Wilbur zipped up again, but an instant later he was back.

"And better stay out of sight yourselves. We don't want my folks calling your folks until this is all sorted out."

"Got it, Wilbur," said Dash.

Wilbur was gone again. A moment later, Lewis stepped too close to a transport tube, and he was nearly sucked up. Dash managed to pull him out in time.

"Let's try to find the schematics," said Violet. "I'm pretty good on computers."

"Me too, I ace all the games," said Dash.

"That's just your super reflexes, Dash," said Violet.

* * *

Meanwhile, a cloaked time machine arrived near the house.

"This is very clever, Doris," said the Bowler Hat Guy. "We'll snatch the boy and make him tell us how to turn on his invention. Then we can sell it to Inventco for millions, and ruin his life."

Doris beeped a warning.

"I know we have to be careful since he's got the Incredibles protecting him," said the Bowler Hat Guy. "But that's why we broke our own super-villain out of jail, for backup."

"D0n't w0rry about the 1ncred1bles," said their companion in a machine-like voice. "Futur10n will deal w1th them."


	9. This Plan Was Not Thought Through

"Let's get that boy!" said the Bowler Hat Guy.

Doris gave a series of sounds.

"Sit here? But I want to look, too," said the Bowler Hat Guy.

"Me t00," said Futur10n.

Doris ejected a small replica of herself that hovered in the air.

"A mini-Doris!" said the Bowler Hat Guy, "I didn't even know you could do that. It's so cute."

He took the remote control Doris handed him. "Let's take her out for a spin."

He operated the controls at random, making the little hat bump into Doris and Futur10n.

"Sorry," said the Bowler Hat Guy.

Doris flew off. With the help of Futur10n, the Bowler Hat Guy was able to make the mini-Doris fly around behind Doris, only hitting into her a few more times. Finally Doris firmly pushed the little hat off in a different direction.

Spying through a garage window with the little hat's built in camera, the Bowler Hat Guy saw Lewis, Violet, and Dash setting to work on the time machine.

"Now, to lure him out of the house," said the Bowler Hat Guy. "I know! I'll blow it up! Yes!"

"N0," said Futur10n.

"I see your point," said the Bowler Hat Guy. "Then he'll be dead."

"C0rrect," said Futur10n.

"Oh! I know!" said the Bowler Hat Guy. "I'll turn him into a duck! Yes! Yes, it's so evil!"

He paused for a moment, then said, "I don't know how to do that."

"Futur10n d0es," said the other villain, pulling out his devolution ray gun.

"But I don't really need a duck," said the Bowler Hat Guy. "This may be harder than I thought."

Meanwhile, inside the house, Lewis thought he got the time-machine working again, but the fix proved to be incomplete. The machine crashed again, leaving Lewis, Violet, and Dash covered in black smoke.

Wilbur came back and urged them to "Keep moving forward." He replaced the Carmen-Miranda hat with a Captain Time Travel baseball cap so that Lewis could be taken more seriously.

With the mini-Doris built-in camera, the Bowler Hat Guy and Futur10n found a group of singing frogs taking a break.

"Talking frogs with their own little outdoor bar, and so smartly dressed! Perfect!" said the Bowler Hat Guy.

When Frankie the frog excused himself from the others to get a fly from the vending machine, the Bowler Hat Guy sent the little hat to land on his head and take over his mind.

"Yes! You are now under my control," said the Bowler Hat Guy.

"I am now under your control," said Frankie.

The villain laughed, and Frankie repeated the laugh mechanically.

"Stop laughing," said the Bowler Hat Guy.

"Stop laughing," said Frankie.

"Don't repeat everything I say," said the Bowler Hat Guy.

"I won't repeat everything you say," said Frankie.

"Excellent," said the Bowler Hat Guy.

"Excellent," said Frankie.

"Did you just say, 'Excellent,' because I said, 'Excellent'?" said the Bowler Hat Guy.

"Uuuh... No," said Frankie.

"Excellent," said the Bowler Hat Guy.

"Excellent," said Frankie.

Lewis was back at work on the time machine, but getting more discouraged. "This is too advanced. There's no way I can fix it."

"Come on," Violet encouraged him. "We know you can do it because you built... you built some great inventions in your time."

"No I didn't," said Lewis. "They were all failures."

"But that's good," said Wilbur. "You learn more from failures than successes."

By this time, the Bowler Hat Guy had directed the frog into the room.

"Now, my slave, seize the boy. Bring him to me. Did you not hear what I said, you idiot? Grab the boy and bring him!"

"Well, it's just that there's a bunch of people over there, and I have little arms. I'm just not so sure how well this plan was thought through," said Frankie.

The Bowler Hat Guy groaned and held his head.

"Master?" asked Frankie. "Master?"

"Let Futur10n try s0meth1ng," said Futur10n.

"A talking frog is not a good minion," said the Bowler Hat Guy. "We need another henchman, something large, not too bright. Something that won't talk back."

They flew the time machine up where they had a bird's eye view of the grounds, and spotted a small dog wearing glasses.

"Th1s an1mal w1ll d0," said Futur10n.

He aimed the devolution ray at the dog. It shuddered and grew, becoming a large T-Rex with white fur. A tiny pair of glasses was perched on top of its nose. They had the mini-Doris disconnect from Frankie and land on the new dinosaur.

Meanwhile, the large Doris had sneaked up on the kids, but before she could act, the dinosaur peered through the window and Lewis saw it.

"Why didn't you tell me you had a pet dinosaur?" Lewis asked.

"Because we don't," said Wilbur.

"What are you talking about? He's standing right out there," said Lewis.

The dog-dinosaur crashed through the wall and grabbed Lewis in its mouth.

"Oh, no! No, you can't eat him! I need him alive," said the Bowler Hat Guy through his communicator.

"Chew on this!" yelled Dash, running up the dino's back and giving it a big kick in the head.

The dinosaur dropped Lewis, who ran outside and into a corner in the wall. The dino pursued him; it butted into the corner, trying to reach him.

"What's going on? Why aren't you seizing the boy?" asked the Bowler Hat Guy.

"I have a big head... ...and little arms. And big eyes and little glasses. I'm just not sure... ...how well this plan was thought through," roared the T-Rex.

The Bowler Hat Guy had another meltdown.

"Master?" roared the dinosaur.

Dash and Violet went into action. Violet threw up a force-field around Lewis, while Dash ran around throwing punches at the creature's tough legs.

The Robinson family heard the commotion and came outside as well. Soon the creature was being peppered by meatball cannons and pizza dough, but it shook off every attack.

"Dash, the hat," Violet called. "See the hat on top of its head? Get that!"

"Huh? Okay," said Dash.

He ran up the dino's back again and kicked off the tiny Helping Hat. Frankie and his frogs caught it and threw it into their car trunk.

"Little Doris now sleeps with the fishes," said the Bowler Hat Guy when he realized what has happened.

With the hat gone, the T-Rex reverted to the personality of the friendly family dog it once was. It panted and lowered its head to be petted.

"Good boy," said Wilbur. "We'll call you Tiny."

"Wilbur, what's going on?" asked Wilbur's mother, Franny.

"That is an excellent question," said Wilbur.

"Ummm, we can explain, but it's a long story," said Violet.

"You were under attack by a super-villain," said Dash. "That's why we came to the rescue."

"I see..." said Franny. "You two seem familiar somehow..."

"No, we've never met before," said Violet quickly. "I'm Invisible Girl and this is the Speedster. We're superheroes."

"And who is this? Another superhero without a mask?" asked Uncle Art, the heroic pizza guy, pointing to Lewis.

"Hi, I'm Lewis," said Lewis nervously.

"He's a friend of ours," said Violet quickly.

"Well, thanks for saving our home," said Lazlo, the painter.

"Not to mention me," said Lewis. He flopped to the ground, and his baseball cap fell off, revealing his upward-pointing blonde hair.

Everyone in the Robinson family gasped in sudden recognition.

"You used the time machine?" Franny said in horror. "And brought him here?"

"Yes, I'm from the past," said Lewis. "Is that a big deal?"

"Lewis, I'm sorry, but you have to go back to your own time," said Franny.

He can't go back until we fix the time machine," said Wilbur.

"It got crashed," said Dash.

"And the other machine was stolen from your garage by a super-villain," said Violet. "The door was unlocked."

Franny said, "Wilbur, I'm calling your father."

"Wait," said Lewis. "If I have to leave, can I at least go back and find my mom? Wilbur promised."

"You promised what?" said Franny.

"I was never gonna do it. I swear!" said Wilbur.

"You lied to me?" asked Lewis.

"No!" said Wilbur. "...Yes."

"I can't believe I was dumb enough to actually believe you were my friends!" Lewis yelled, and ran.

"Shall we follow him?" asked Dash.

"Give him a little time to cool off," said Violet.

"Mister, you're grounded until you die," said Franny.

Violet thought, "Grounded for life? How are we ever going to date now?"


	10. The Reveal

Lewis ran in a rage through the Robinson's topiary garden grounds. He sat in the shadow of one of the giant teacup hedges, wiping tears from his eyes.

He heard something. There was a series of beeps and twitters. Then a voice echoed from somewhere nearby.

"Oh, yes, Doris, it is a shame. All he wants to do is go back in time to meet the mother he never knew, but they won't let him. We'd let him, though. Too bad we don't have a time machine. Oh, wait. We do."

The stolen time-machine shimmered into view. Inside was a villainous-looking man.

"Bowler Hat Guy?" asked Lewis.

"Hello, Lewis," said Bowler Hat Guy.

"What do you want?"

"To make your dream come true."

The Bowler Hat Guy lifted up an old propeller which Lewis recognized from the Memory Scanner.

"All you have to do is put Humpty Dumpty back together again, and we'll take you back to find your mommy," said the man.

Lewis considered. The man didn't look trustworthy, but the Robinsons had looked that way, and they betrayed him. For sure, he wasn't going to get any help from the so-called heroes, Captain Time Travel and the and the young Incredibles. Maybe they had lied about this guy, too.

Lewis heard Wilbur calling for him, but he turned away. The man was his only hope. Lewis took his outstretched hand and got into the time machine. There wasn't a lot of room, because of a large extra piece of machinery in the back, but he squeezed in.

They flew away and landed on top of a run-down building on the outskirts of Todayland. Inside, in a half-darkened room, the Bowler Hat Guy got out the broken Memory Scanner. Lewis quickly put it back together.

"I can't imagine why you're so interested in this piece of junk," said Lewis.

"That's for me to know and you to find out," said the Bowler Hat Guy. "Now, show me how to work this thing."

"It doesn't work. Never did," said Lewis.

"Well, supposing it did, and if one were presenting the invention to, say, a board of directors for a very large invention company, where might one find the 'On' switch? Hypothetically speaking, of course."

"All right, first, you turn this knob twice, then you push this red button, and that's it. It's pretty easy."

"What a stupid way to turn it on!" said the Bowler Hat Guy, pushing Lewis out of the way and grabbing the device.

"Okay, take me to see my mom now," said Lewis.

"Yes, of course, said the Bowler Hat Guy. "Doris?"

Doris flew around Lewis, winding a rope around him and leaving him tied securely.

"We had a deal!" said Lewis.

"Crossies! Doesn't count," said the Bowler Hat Guy.

"Why are you doing this to me?" asked Lewis. "I never did anything to you."

"You still haven't figured it out?"

"Figured out what?"

"Well, let's see if this rings a bell. Father of the Future, inventor extraordinaire, 'Keep moving forward'?"

"That's not me. That's Wilbur's dad."

The Bowler Hat Guy looked at him with an evil, expectant leer.

"Are you saying... that I'm Wilbur's... dad?" asked Lewis.

"Give the boy a prize. You grew up to be the founder of this wretched time, so I plan to destroy your destiny. Easy peasy, rice and cheesy."

"Well... So if I'm Wilbur's dad... What does that have to do with you?"

"Allow me to shed some light on the subject."

The Bowler Hat Guy turned on the lights and the room was suddenly familiar.

"My old room!" said Lewis.

"I think you mean our old room," said the Bowler Hat Guy.

"What?"

"Yes! Yes, it is I, Mike Yagoobian!" said the Bowler Hat Guy, removing his cloak to reveal he was wearing a tiny, filthy, Little League uniform underneath. Lewis gasped.

"Yes, I know. I'm disgusting, but one learns to love it," said Yagoobian.

Yagoobin revealed that because Lewis' work on his invention kept him up without sleep before his big game, he fell asleep during the game and missed a catch. It had ruined his life. His bitterness had kept him from making friends, and kept him from being adopted.

"It was then that I realized it wasn't my fault. It was yours. If you hadn't kept me up all night working on your stupid project, then I wouldn't have missed the catch, So I devised a brilliant plan to get my revenge."

Yagoobian paused, remembering his plan to egg and TP the Robinson building.

"Then, just as I was on the brink of destroying Robinson Industries, I met her," said Yagoobian, indicating Doris.

"We retreated to our villainous lair, where Doris spun a tale of deception and woe. Apparently, you invented her to be a Helping Hat, a slave to humankind, but Doris knew she was capable of so much more. However, you didn't see her true potential. So you shut her down, or so you thought.

"We both had a score to settle with you, and while my plan for revenge was brilliant, Doris' was... Well, we went with Doris', but I made a very, very important contribution. Together we made the perfect team.

"I went to your house, snuck in the garage and stole the time machine, all thanks to that pointy-haired little kid who forgot to lock the garage door."

Yagoobian laughed, an evil laugh. "And now all that's left is to return to Inventco, where I'll pass off your little gizmo as my own."

"But you have no idea what that could do to this future!" said Lewis.

"I don't care. I just want to ruin your life," said Yagoobian.

"Goob, I had no idea," said Lewis.

"Shut up! And don't call me Goob! How many evil villains do you know who can pull off a name like Goob?"

"Look, I'm sorry your life turned out so bad, but don't blame me. You messed it up yourself. You just focused on the bad stuff when all you had to do was let go of the past and keep... moving... forward." Lewis slowed down as he spoke, as he began to realize he could take his own advice.

"Let's see... Take responsibility for my own life, or blame you? Ding ding ding ding ding! 'Blame you' wins hands down!"

Yagoobian and Doris marched the bound Lewis up to the roof of the old orphanage, where the time-machine was hovering. Yagoobian was pulling the Memory Scanner in the old red wagon.

"This is gonna be the best day of my life!" said Yagoobian.

Lewis heard owl hoots, and he turned to see Wilbur, Violet, Dash, and Carl hiding on the side of the roof.

Lewis smiled, even as Doris gave him a shove forwards. Apparently they planned to take him along, just in case there were any more hitches in running the machine.

"Doris, would you be a dear and open the hatch for me, please?"

Lewis threw himself onto the wagon with the invention, making it roll toward the edge of the roof. He knew the heroes would catch him.

Yagoobian ran after him, calling, "No!"

Carl extended his arms to pick up Lewis and make their escape.

Futur10n popped up from the time-machine. The robot villain had been folded up to look like a piece of equipment. A rapid series of shots from the devolution ray turned Carl into a heap of parts and reduced Violet and Dash to monkeys.

"Oh no!" cried Wilbur. Doris swept up the Memory Scanner Device with her mechanical claws and put it into the time-machine along with the Bowler Hat Guy. Not needing Futur10n any more, Doris shoved him out of the machine, letting him smash to the ground several stories below.

"Take a good look around, boys," said the Bowler Hat Guy, "Because your future is about to change."

He activated the time-machine and it vanished.


	11. Fixing It

The time machine was gone with the Bowler Hat Guy. Wilbur looked at Lewis with desperation in his eyes.

"Lewis, you have to fix the time machine," said Wilbur.

"No. No, I can't," said Lewis. "What about your dad? You could call him."

"You are my dad," said Wilbur.

"But that's in the future," said Lewis.

"There won't be a future unless you fix the time machine," said Wilbur. "Look, I messed up. I left the garage unlocked, and I've tried like crazy to fix things, but now it's up to you. You can do it, Dad."

Wilbur became a cloud of smoke and whirled away.

"Wilbur? Wilbur!" called Lewis.

The monkey which had been Violet gave a screech of despair. The monkey which had been Dash raced around the roof in a blur.

"You two superheroes! You still have your powers even as monkeys!" said Lewis. "You've got to help me get back to the house and fix the time machine so we can save Wilbur."

Violet chittered and projected a force bubble around Lewis, lifting him up. She put a larger bubble around them all, forming a rolling hamster ball for a move that she and Dash had practiced many times before.

Dash took off running, moving the ball at high speed while Violet and Lewis floated inside. As they went, the world changed around them from the park of Todayland to the grim hat-shaped factories of a Doris-ruled world.

They reached the Robinson's garage, where the broken time machine was still standing. Beside it was set up a television screen, playing a video message of gloating triumph, recorded by Doris for Lewis to see.

First there was the image of Mike Yagoobian in the boardroom of Inventco, showing off the Memory Scanner. Now he knew how to activate it and it was a great success.

"So, Yagoobian, any other ideas you'd like to share with us?" asked the CEO of Inventco.

"Yes. I call them Helping Hats," said the voice of Yagoobian, as the TV showed a factory stamping out dozens of the Doris hats.

The next image showed chaos in the streets, as the hats took over people's minds. Mike Yagoobian was walking around in shock.

"Doris, what's happening? I don't understand. I just wanted to ruin his future, not this," said Mike.

A swarm of hats attacked him with their claws, pulling him down.

"No!" cried Lewis. "No. No, this can't be happening! No!"

"Oh, Lewis, it's already happened," said the voice of Franny.

Lewis spun around and saw a crowd of Robinsons advancing on him, each with their eyes covered by a Helping Hat.

"No!" said Lewis.

The hat zombies were about to grab him when the Incredibles struck. Dash knocked them back in a blurred attack, and then Violet put up a force bubble that held them back.

"Why did I ever invent that stupid hat?" said Lewis.

With his wits sharpened by desperation, Lewis repaired the time machine. A few adjustments, and he knew it was going to work.

"Take a good look around, Doris, 'cause your future's about to change," said Lewis, as he and the Incredibles monkeys jumped into the time machine and activated it.

Forming a loop of temporal energy, the machine jumped them back to Inventco, just as Yagoobian was about to demonstrate the scanner.

"Goob, stop!" Lewis called. "You don't know what you're doing!"

"Yes, I do. I'm ruining your future," said Yagoobian.

"She's using you, Goob, and when she gets what she wants, she'll get rid of you," said Lewis.

Doris reacted by putting out her claws with spinning blades and coming at Lewis. She had almost reached him when Violet's force-bubble surrounded her.

"I am never going to invent you," said Lewis.

The temporal wave of this decision caught up with Doris and she disintegrated into nothing.

Lewis said, "Come on, Goob. I've got to show you something."

Yagoobian got into the time machine, and back to the future they went.

When he saw the ruined world, Yagoobian was shocked. "Doris? I thought she was my friend."

The time wave from their fix caught up with the world, and in a flash of bright time bubbles the world returned to the way it was.

And then Wilbur was back. "You did it, Lewis. You did it!"

Violet ran and threw her arms around Wilbur. "We did it. We saved you!"

Wilbur hugged her back. "And you're saved, too. I mean, you're not a monkey anymore."

Dash advanced on Yagoobian. "I'll take the villain to the police."

"Let him go," said Lewis.

"What are you doing? He's the bad guy," said Wilbur.

"No, he's not. He's my roommate," said Lewis.

"What?" said Wilbur.

"He's my old roommate," said Lewis. And I really think you guys should adopt him."

"Are you nuts?" said Wilbur.

"Give me one good reason why not," said Lewis.

"I'll give you three good reasons," said Wilbur. "He stole our time machine, tried to ruin your future, and he smells like he hasn't showered in 30 years!"

"May I remind you, I'm your father, and you have to do what I say," said Lewis.

"Okay, Mr Yagoobian, do you want to be a..." asked Wilbur, trailing off as he realized Yagoobian was gone.

They found Mike's checklist book on the ground, with question marks written after the final entry.

"We have to fix this," said Lewis.

* * *

They had all forgotten about the stolen time machine left in the past. It was towed and impounded. Nobody knew what to make of the strange car model, and it ended up in the junkyard near the orphanage.

Young Buddy Pine, looking for something that would impress his hero, Mr. Incredible, found the car. More importantly, he figured out how how read the computer memory in the car, loaded with ideas for inventions. One of the ideas was for a rocket belt. A new wave of changes was about to hit the world.


	12. Lewis Goes Back

The Robinson family rushed around Lewis, anxiously asking if he was all right.

"I'm fine. I feel fine," said Lewis. "In fact, better than I've felt in a long time."

"And who are these two?" asked Franny, looking at Dash and Violet.

"You know, the Incredibles," said Lewis. "They helped rescue me."

"Pleased to meet you, young circus acrobats," said Grandpa Bud. "Thank you for helping Lewis."

"No they're not acrobats. They're superheroes," said Wilbur.

"Don't make jokes about that," said Grandma Lucille. "Superheroes are against the law."

"Against the law?" said Violet, her face showing shock.

"It was before your generation, so you may not have heard about it," said Franny. "There used to be all sorts of costumed vigilantes. But they had too many lawsuits and the government got tired of paying to bail them out. So they were forced back to civilian identities, and being a superhero was made illegal, just as bad as being a super-villain."

"Hold on a minute," said Wilbur.

The kids pulled back into a huddle.

"Time is still broken," said Violet.

"What happened to Mom and Dad? Are they in jail?" asked Dash. "Or just in normal identities somewhere?"

"I know one thing that's wrong," said Violet. "Lewis isn't back in his own time, and the time dam may be leaking."

"What do you mean by a time dam?" asked Lewis.

"I read the manual when we were trying to fix the time machine," said Violet. "Pulling a person from his time can be a catastrophe. The time machine creates a temporary time dam so that changes from that won't propagate forward."

"Changes propagated forward from what the Bowler Hat guy and Doris did," said Wilbur.

"They didn't displace people in time," said Lewis. "They just made the science fair go wrong for me, and then got InventCo to mass-produce Helping Hats."

"Once Doris took over, it didn't matter much if you were there or not," said Violet. "And it didn't matter that you weren't there to invent her, because she had a new way to be invented."

"So why did Doris disappear?" asked Dash. "If she didn't need Lewis."

"I think it was because she acted violent in front of the InventCo CEO," said Lewis. "It was his decision not to produce Helping Hats that wiped her out."

"But now you have to go back, ASAP," said Violet. "The time dam is breaking down and history is changing in unexpected ways."

A voice came from inside the house. "Franny, they're gone. Oh, this is terrible!"

"Well, he's home early," said Grandpa Bud, looking at his watch.

"Franny, where are you?" called Cornelius Robinson, coming out of the garage door. "The time machines are gone!"

From his fuzzy standing-up blond hair it was clear to Lewis that Cornelius was his future self.

"No time to explain," Lewis said to the Robinson family. "I have to get back now, to the science fair!'

"Yes, you do," said Franny. "Good luck. And remember one thing. I am always right. Even when I'm wrong, I'm right."

"You're absolutely right," said Lewis.

Lewis, Wilbur, Violet, and Dash ran for the time machine. Wilbur operated the controls.

* * *

They appeared hovering over the city, but it was night.

"Wait a minute," said Lewis. "You're supposed to take me back to the science fair."

"I know," said Wilbur.

"Well, I think you punched in the wrong numbers," said Lewis.

Wilbur said, "We agreed that, if you fixed the time machine, I'd take you back to see your mom."

Lewis said, "What?"

Violet said, "No!"

"A deal's a deal," said Wilbur.

They saw a hooded young woman walking slowly toward the orphanage, carrying a bundled baby in her arms.

"Lewis, if you talk to her and get her to change her mind, your whole life will be changed. The chances of Wilbur being born go to nothing," said Violet. "Please don't do it."

"I've seen her now, so the deal is complete," said Lewis. "Now take me straight to the science fair. I've seen the family I really want, and it's all of you guys, the Robinsons."

"Let's go," said Dash. "We need to fix the timeline, now."

"Right," said Violet. "If there are no superheroes, our family will have a different life and you and I may never meet, Wilbur."

Wilbur reset the controls. "All right, let's do this."

In some versions of the timeline, there was a knock at the door just after baby Lewis was left at the door of the orphanage by his single mom. In this one, there was no knock. But the baby was found quickly and brought in anyway, with no real difference to the life of Lewis.

* * *

They dropped Lewis off on the roof of the orphanage. He took the box with the fixed-up mind scanner.

Wilbur gave him a farewell hug. "I never thought my dad would be my best friend."

Lewis started to leave, still looking a little anxious.

"Remember, I've got a time machine," said Wilbur. "If you mess up again, I'll just keep coming back til you get it right."

"Bye Incredibles, thank you for everything," said Lewis, looking like he wanted to hug them too.

"You better get going," said Wilbur, with a track of jealousy for Violet.

"See you later, Wilbur," said Lewis.

The time machine flew up, and Wilbur wrote a farewell message in sky-writing: "See ya later, Dad!" before it popped back to the future.

Lewis was on his way into the science fair with his invention on his red wagon when he suddenly thought of something. "Wait a second!"

He left the wagon in the hallway and ran to the Little League baseball field. Goob was asleep on his feet in the outfield.

"Goob! Goob, wake up!" Lewis called just as a fly ball went into the air.

"What?" said Goob.

He woke up just in time to make the winning catch. The team lifted Mike Yagoobian up in celebration, setting him on the course for a happier life.

Lewis ran back to the science fair and found everything almost dismanted.

"Mr Willerstein," Lewis said. "I know what went wrong. Can I have one more chance? Please!"

"My ride isn't here yet, so fire it up," said Mr. Willerstein with a sigh.

"I need a volunteer," said Lewis.

Dr. Lucille Krunklehorn raised her hand eagerly.

From there, everything went as it should. The invention was a success, Lucille and her husband Bud became interested in adopting Lewis, and Franny (a girl who trained frogs in music) met Lewis for the first time. His bright future was assured.

* * *

Wilbur, Violet, and Dash arrived and put the second time machine back in the garage. A ripple of time bubbles passed through, and the first time machine reappeared in the garage. The now non-villainous Mike Yagoobian had never stolen it.

"All right, Lewis must have done something to stop the Bowler Hat Guy!" said Wilbur.

But a stone once thrown back into the time-stream remains thrown. A temporal clone of the time machine remained in the past where Yagoobian left it. The technological secrets it contained would inspire young Buddy Pine to create rocket boots and many other inventions.

Mike Yagoobian, with his cheerful attitude after making the winning catch in the game, easily found adoptive parents. And without the bad example of a creepy revenge-obsessed fellow orphan to warn him, Buddy's own obsession with Mr. Incredible developed to the extreme. Now Buddy was not only destined to cause a major train accident that led to the lawsuits which led to the banning of superheroes, but he was on his way to becoming a super-villain himself: Syndrome.

"I bet I'm not grounded any more. What do you say to that, guys?" asked Wilbur.

As Wilbur looked at Violet and Dash, time bubbles surrounded them, first replacing their superhero costumes with civilian clothes and then making them vanish altogether.

Wilbur dashed out of the garage and saw more differences. The expanse of lawn was overgrown, and the topiary was badly trimmed.

The Todayland theme park looked deserted. It was in a state of partial construction.

"Now what?" said Wilbur.

He ran inside the house and called, "Mom! What happened to Todayland?"

"Nothing had happened with that for a long time," said Franny Robinson. "We haven't been able to finish it, with all the patent lawsuits from Pine Industries. I don't know how they keep coming up first with the same ideas as your father. I suspect industrial espionage, but we haven't been able to prove it."

"What about superheroes? Are they still against the law?"

"Of course, dear."

"Do we know the Parr family? Bob and Helen Parr, and their kids Violet and Dash?"

"I've never heard of them. You seem to be jumping from subject to subject today."

"Sorry, Mom, I have a lot on my mind," said Wilbur.

He ran upstairs to his room to think. Violet and her brother could be living anywhere, maybe not even with the same names. How was he going to find them? Would he ever see Violet again?


	13. Holding Out For a Hero

It was Wilbur's theory that former superheroes wouldn't be able to resist helping people. It was a long shot, but it was his only possible lead to find Violet again. If they were leading perfectly normal lives it was hopeless.

Wilbur went to talk to Carl the robot in the workshop. "Carl, Dad has a lot of AI programs lying around, doesn't he?"

"Of course," said Carl. "I have an advanced version of one myself. Have you suddenly become interested in programming?"

"It's a small side project. I need an AI to help me to do advanced web searches. Not just key words, but a pattern," said Wilbur.

"That sounds like a job for the Amazing Spider-Bot," said Carl. "The best web-crawling bot your father ever wrote."

"Great, can you help me set it up?" asked Wilbur.

""I'd be happy to," said Carl. "As long as it's not for immoral purposes, like collecting an image stash."

"Nothing like that," said Wilbur. "I need to look for cities where people used great feats of strength, body stretching, invisibility, force fields, or super-speed, to fight crime or rescue people. They couldn't do it openly. It would have to make it look like coincidences or something."

"Hmm, that's complicated. Why?" asked Carl.

"That is an excellent question," said Wilbur. "Let's just say for my own curiosity."

"I can't see the harm in it, though that may just be my lack of imagination," said Carl. "All right, we can start Spider-Bot searching. It's a learning program. At first it will turn up a lot of false positives. You'll have to go through them and tell it whether the articles it finds are like what you need or not."

It took a great deal of time and patience. Wilbur was turning up nothing until he studied the history of Mr. Incredible and his allies, and learned that he sometimes teamed up with an ice-powered hero named Frozone. Could they still be working together behind the scenes?

When he added ice powers to the search, a result turned up, a newspaper story from the coastal city of Metroville, a few months back.

_POLICE FOIL ROBBERY BY ICE-POWERED CRIMINALS_

_Police, responding to a fire alarm along with firefighters last night, found a jewelry store robbery in progress. Rookie officer Willard Corey was instantly frozen in place by a sheet of ice when he tried to arrest the criminals. The thieves made a hasty escape without taking anything. On the floor of the store were found several residents of the adjacent apartment building which had burned to the ground. They had apparently escaped from the fire through a large hole in the wall made by the thieves, but they were suffering from smoke inhalation and could not give a clear account of how they got there._

That could be Frozone and Mr. Incredible, crashing by mistake into a jewelry store after a heroic fire rescue. It was a starting point, but Metroville was huge. Finding Violet's family under a relocated identity was going to be difficult.

Wilbur programmed the bot to send him instant text messages about any breaking news from the city. If only Wilbur could find the perfect time and place to talk to Mr. Incredible, maybe he could persuade the hero to let him see Violet...

Persuade a suspicious secret vigilante to blow his cover and expose his family to a snooping kid he didn't know? Yeah, right. Still, it was his only hope.

* * *

A few days later, a text message came in: "GIANT SIX-LEGGED ROBOT ATTACKING DOWNTOWN METROVILLE."

It was just the sort of thing that would bring out Mr. Incredible and his family. Wilbur decided he had to get there. He rushed to the second time machine and got it going. He used it only as a flying car at first as he rushed to the scene. Wilbur knew he was going to be in trouble with his family, but this was more important.

As he flew the long distance to Metroville, he continued to get updates from the Bot. "NEW SUPERHERO FAILS TO STOP ROBOT," "ROCKET ARRIVES WITH MORE HEROES," "SUPER BATTLE IN PROGRESS," and "HEROES DESTROY KILLER ROBOT."

This was all good, but they were going to fade back into their secret identities if Wilbur didn't do something. They might even be punished under the Anti Super-Vigilante laws. Checking the time stamps on the text messages, Wilbur set the time machine to go back to just after the robot was defeated.

* * *

In downtown Metroville, there was devastation everywhere. The exploded remains of the robot were on the edge of a large park lake. People came out and cheered the five costumed individuals, four in red with a letter "i" logo on the chest, and one in white and light blue.

One elderly gentlemen spoke to another. "See that? That's the way you do it. That's Old School."

"Yup. No school like the Old School," said the other.

The time machine popped into sight and landed near the heroes. Wilbur jumped out and ran up to the heroes. "Mr. Incredible, may I talk to you for a moment, please?"

Frozone glared suspiciously at him. "Who are you, kid? Are you behind this robot deal?"

Violet, with memories of the other time-line still hazy in her mind, said, "I think we should listen to him. He seems familiar. Somehow, I know he has nothing to do with the villain behind all this."

"Wait, I recognize you," said Mr. Incredible.

"You do?" asked Wilbur.

"You're a younger version of Captain Time Travel!" said Mr. Incredible. "I know that logo on your shirt, and that time machine, from the old days."

"Umm, yeah, that's who I am, Captain Time Travel," said Wilbur, going along with it even though he doubted that he was really the hero in question.

"What brings you here, Captain?" asked Elastigirl.

"The time-line's gone wrong," said Wilbur, with a sudden inspiration. "I need your help to set it right. If we act now, we may be able to prevent all this before it happens."

Mr. Incredible looked uncertain. "The Omnidroid did a lot of property damage, and it would be great to fix that, but..."

"People are cheering us as heroes again," said Elastigirl. "If we undo it..."

"That's just it," said Wilbur. "It didn't used to be this way for heroes. You guys were legal. But something went wrong and now there's all this."

"I think... I remember things being like that," said Violet.

"It seems like a dream now," said Dash. "But, yeah!"

"If heroes were legal, Syndrome would have had a harder time picking us off one by one with his Project Kronos," said Mr. Incredible. "Our friends would still be alive."

"Let's do this," said Dash.

"Come on, we'll take the time machine and figure out how to put right what once went wrong," said Wilbur.

"I can't come with you," said Frozone. "I have to get back to Honey."

"Give her our best," said Elastigirl.

The Incredibles and Wilbur all packed into the time machine, and they were off.


	14. What Once Went Wrong

"First stop is to visit a young man I dropped off in his home time after a mission," said Wilbur. "Something he did after he got back made things much worse."

They landed on the roof of the orphanage, and Wilbur went down to look for Lewis. He found Lewis happily talking to Mike Yagoobian, who had returned from a successful little league game. Another kid with blonde hair in a crewcut was listening.

"So I met this fantastic family at the science fair, the Robinsons, and it looks like..." said Lewis.

"Hey Lewis," said Wilbur, barging into the conversation. "May I talk to you for a minute? Maybe up on the roof?"

"All right, sure," said Lewis.

Lewis went upstairs and he was startled to find the Incredibles there.

"Wow! Violet and Dash, this is the rest of your super-team?" asked Lewis. "Those matching costumes look great."

"Thanks," said Violet. "We just got them."

"When did they meet this kid?" Mr. Incredible wondered to himself.

"Things are kind of messed up in the future," said Dash. "Superheroes are illegal, and we had to be relocated."

"What did you do after you got back that was different?" asked Wilbur.

"I got my mind scanner working at the science fair. But that was supposed to happen," said Lewis.

"Anything else?" asked Wilbur.

"I made sure Goob would wake up and catch the ball at the game. I'm sure it's going to change his life for the better," said Lewis. "He won't grow up bitter and twisted, and be the Bowler Hat Guy."

"There could be side effects from that," said Violet. "I guess, though I don't see how."

"But wait a second," said Lewis. "They were telling us heroes were illegal before that, when we got back from defeating Doris. Something was already wrong with the timeline."

"I'm very confused," said Elastigirl. "Violet and Dash, you went on missions in time with Captain Time Travel?"

"I'm confused, too," said Mr. Incredible. "When did this happen?"

"There was an alternate timeline," said Violet.

"We'll explain later," said Dash.

"What did we change?" asked Wilbur. "Inventco didn't produce any copies of Doris, but it wasn't supposed to. The Bowler Hat Guy came back to our own time in our time machine, and..."

"Maybe that's it!" said Lewis. "He came here with Doris in the other time machine, the one he stole. What happened to it?"

"It was never stolen, because you fixed Goob's life," said Wilbur. "It's back in our garage."

"I don't know," said Lewis. "Time travel is tricky. There could still be a temporal copy here."

"How could we find it?" asked Violet.

"When I was working to repair this time machine, I found instructions about a tracer function that could find the other machine, if it was close to the same time and place," said Lewis. "It's worth a try."

Lewis operated the console on the time machine. A map came up, and there was a flashing red blip. "There it is!"

Mr. Incredible looked at the map. "I know this town. That's the Municiberg city dump, not far from here."

"Someone must have found the car where the Bowler Hat guy parked it, and towed it away," said Dash.

"If anyone finds it, they could use the future tech in it to change the world," said Wilbur. "Not just the machine itself, but it has computer records of all my Dad's inventions. Your inventions."

"Not good," said Lewis.

"That's another thing that changed," said Wilbur. "Our family wasn't as successful, because some company kept patenting your invention ideas before you could."

"That company must be run by the people who found the machine," said Lewis.

"Let's get it before they do," said Dash.

* * *

They flew the time machine to the city dump and asked about a recently-arrived car.

An old dump worker said, "That weren't really a car. Weird style, no place for a key. It was some kind of joke, left in the middle of the street. The police brought it straight here instead of impounding it. It's way back in the west corner; the boss wants to keep it around for a while, maybe gut it for parts."

"We need to see it," said Mr. Incredible.

"Sure, you can take a look, Mr. Incredible," said the dump worker. "I must say, you look a bit older in real life. Nice new costume, though."

The group headed for the corner the man had indicated. Lewis lagged a little behind because the others were moving so fast.

"What will we do with it?" asked Wilbur. "We already have a copy of it at home."

"I could smash it," said Mr. Incredible.

They found the time machine and Mr. Incredible had just raised his fist to smash it when a ray caught them and froze them in place. All but Lewis, who hid behind a rusted-out car.

"Uh-uh, no smashy," said Syndrome, hovering up from a pile of trash and continuing to aim his zero-point ray at them. "You're not destroying my source of inventive inspiration."

"Syndrome! How did you get here?" asked Mr. Incredible.

"I was watching from a rooftop when you jumped into a time machine and disappeared," said Syndrome. "I knew you would be coming to dear old Municiberg."

"You have a time machine, too?" asked Elastigirl.

"I learned how to make one," said Syndrome. "Somebody from the future thoughtfully left me one to work with, along with all sorts of other ideas. With my genius, it was a snap. I went a step further and made a portable time machine, integrated into my costume. But I never used it for my plans for revenge and glory. I had a better way, less risky than meddling in time. Until you ruined my plans, and went back in time to cheat me out of everything else!"

"You found this time-machine as a kid?" asked Mr. Incredible, to get the villain monologuing further, to buy time.

"Yes," said Syndrome. "Inspired by your showy heroics, I was looking for a way to impress you, and I found a source of technology that enabled me to build my first rocket pack. Poor little Buddy Pines, I was then, living in an orphanage nearby. Yes, I'm an orphan. Didn't you wonder why I asked to be your ward, as Incrediboy? I was hoping you'd be my guardian, eventually adopt me. But you destroyed that dream. Then you had the gall to ask the police to tell my parents what I was doing. That was the last straw."

"I'm sorry, I didn't know that," said Mr. Incredible.

"You took away my future," said Syndrome. "I'll return the favor. After I destroy you here, I'll go back and get your baby Jack-Jack. I'll be a good mentor; supportive, encouraging. In time, who knows? He might be a good side-kick."

"No!" cried Elastigirl, as Syndrome used the zero-point ray to lift the whole group high off the ground.

"What are you doing to Mr. Incredible, super-villain?" yelled a young boy with crew-cut blond hair.

Lewis was following right behind him. As soon as he figured out who Syndrome was, he had run to the orphanage to get his friend.

Syndrome glared at him. "Who are you to challenge me, little squirt? I could just squash... me?"

"I'm Buddy Pine!" said the boy. "I'm Mr. Incredible's greatest fan."

"Listen kid, I'm doing this all for you. One day Mr. Incredible will disappoint you and crush your dream of being his sidekick. I'm taking revenge on him for you, by killing him and his whole family."

"You're crazy! You don't know what you're talking about."

"I know, because I'm you in the future, grown up."

"I don't like you. I'll never grow up like you, no matter what happens!"

Syndrome vanished. With his zero-point energy beams gone, the Incredibles and Wilbur dropped to the ground. Elastigirl stretched out and caught the kids who might be hurt in a fall. Mr. Incredible was nigh-invulnerable, so he landed with no trouble.

"Thank you, Buddy!" said Mr. Incredible. "We'll find a way to make things better this time around."

"I have an idea," said Lewis. "I'm about to be adopted by the Robinsons. They'll let me follow my dreams of science and invention. I know you have great technical skills. Would you like to work with me on inventions? Maybe they'll adopt you, too!"

"If I can't be Mr. Incredible's sidekick, that sounds like a cool deal," said Buddy.

"As you can see, I have a few sidekicks already," said Mr. Incredible. "I think you should meet the Robinsons."


	15. Finale: Another Dinner With the Robinsons

"It looks like our job here is done, Captain," said Mr. Incredible. "You can take us home to Metroville now."

"We'll check when we get back," said Wilbur. "You may be living in Municiberg again, if you never had to be relocated."

This turned out to be the case. The home that Dash and Violet remembered from the old timeline was waiting for them. A professional super-sitter with a secret identity clearance had been taking care of baby Jack-Jack, not an inexperienced teenager. There had been some power outbursts, but nothing the sitter couldn't handle.

* * *

After dropping off the Incredibles, Wilbur returned home. He slipped back in time to just after he left, so he could put the car back into the garage without trouble. He hoped.

A man with blond hair was tinkering in the workshop when he arrived. "Hi, Wilbur. Your father and I know what you were doing with the time machine, and it's all right. You did what you had to."

Wilbur did a double-take, because the man had Syndrome's blond spiky hairstyle.

"Buddy?" asked Wilbur nervously.

"I haven't gone by that name in years. I never liked it much, and my adoptive father's name is Bud too, so he suggested I rename myself Sylvester Robinson. Uncle Sylvester, to you."

"Hi, Uncle Sylvester. Umm, was there any news about superhero action in Metroville today?"

"No, it was pretty quiet," said Uncle Sylvester. "The only story from there was that Gazerbeam accepted an award from the city of behalf of the Thrilling Three, for their outstanding work in protecting the community."

"That's good," said Wilbur.

"I take it you remember something different?" asked Uncle Sylvester.

"Yeah, but it never happened, now," said Wilbur.

"I'm working on a personal, portable time travel device," said Uncle Sylvester. "I was thinking of giving it to you. You could become a hero, like Captain Time Travel, and join your friend Violet in action sometimes. I like the idea of being the brains behind a superhero."

"You know her secret identity?" asked Wilbur.

"Because of that visit when we were kids, your father and I both figured out their identities. But it's not general knowledge; we kept their secret. In their secret identities they're friends of the family. They're invited over for dinner tonight."

"I'd better call Violet and remind them. They're working on fitting back in after a lot of time travel and timeline changes."

"Good idea. My fiancee is coming over, too," said Sylvester. "Do you remember her?"

"No, I don't," said Wilbur.

"Her name's Mira. She's tall and willowy, with long platinum blond hair. She works for a hush-hush government agency. I'm sure you'll get along; she's smart and very good with people."

* * *

That night, the whole Robinson and Parr families gathered around the table for a big dinner, including a typical meatball fight between Franny and her brother Gaston.

The Parrs were a little wary of Mira at first, but they warmed up to her after a while and decided she probably wasn't a villain or spy in this timeline.

Violet and Wilbur walked in the topiary garden after dinner. No killer robots or time-travelling villains interrupted them this time.

"Violet, would you like to go out with me to a movie sometime?" Wilbur asked.

"Sure," Violet said. "I like movies. I'll buy the popcorn. How about Friday?"

"Okay, Friday it is," said Wilbur.

Violet reached out a hand to him, and Wilbur took it.

"Thank you," Violet said, "You really came through and fixed time for us."

"I had to, since I helped break it by leaving the garage door unlocked," said Wilbur.

"Don't be modest. You're a hero," said Violet.

"You're a hero, too," said Wilbur.

"Of course I am," said Violet with a smile.

They continued to walk together, holding hands.

THE END


End file.
